Mimolette imports on hold

A cheese monger checks Mimolette rounds in Isigny-sur-Mere in France. The U.S. has banned the cheese, saying mites used on the rind are an allergen.

A cheese monger checks Mimolette rounds in Isigny-sur-Mere in France. The U.S. has banned the cheese, saying mites used on the rind are an allergen.

Photo: Charly Triballeau, AFP/Getty Images

Mimolette imports on hold

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You know how you don't really desire something until you can't have it anymore?

I've never been a huge fan of Mimolette, the bowling-ball-shaped French cheese with the pumpkin-colored paste, but now that it's all but banned in the U.S., I'm craving it.

This well-aged cow's milk cheese has never sickened anyone, to my knowledge. The French have been enjoying Mimolette for four centuries, so if it were harmful, they might know by now.

But early this year, the Food and Drug Administration began holding shipments of Mimolette because of tiny mites on the rind. They deemed the mites an allergen and health hazard and demanded that importers destroy the wheels.

Cheese mites aren't unique to Mimolette. They thrive on the surface of aging cheeses, creating pockmarks and little piles of rind dust.

Most cheese makers consider them a nuisance and try to control them by brushing the wheels frequently or washing with brine. But Mimolette producers actually encourage these microscopic mites, considering them essential partners in ripening the cheese and producing its distinctive sweet, earthy flavor.

By burrowing into the rind, the mites aerate the cheese and allow it to breathe and mature. Sounds disgusting, but you don't eat the rind. And in any case, we co-exist with mites everywhere, every day. They love our flour bins, rice bags and pasta boxes.

The FDA has no legal limit for mites on cheese rinds, but has indicated that its target is no more than six mites per square inch. Aged Mimolette simply can't meet that standard.

Benoit de Vitton, the U.S. sales representative for Isigny, which produces 60 percent of the Mimolette in France, says his company has tried several techniques to lower the population to acceptable levels, including shaving the rind, then waxing the entire wheel.

"Even that did not satisfy the FDA," de Vitton says. "They said they found 7 1/2 to eight mites on some wheels." A half mite? Really?

"Some people have tried to brush the wheels really well and then Cryovac them," says Peg Smith of Tomales Bay Foods, the Bay Area cheese distributor. "But it doesn't really work."

Like other importers, Tomales Bay had to destroy a shipment. Although the FDA has not officially banned the cheese, importers can't risk losing so much product and have stopped shipping the aged cheese.

De Vitton says his firm plans to send some 3-month-old waxed wheels to the U.S., but acknowledges that these young cheeses won't resemble the 2-year-old Mimolette that people know.

Smith says she has no idea why Mimolette suddenly became a target. Most American cheese merchants have been selling it for years.

"The one we sold was 2 1/2 to 3 years old, and it had a following," says Smith. "I'm so sad because I love Mimolette. It's a little salty, and it has all those chocolaty, caramelly flavors."

As a replacement, Smith recommends an aged Gouda. I particularly like L'Amuse Gouda and Wilde Weide from Holland, and the Marieke Gouda from Wisconsin.